Courage

Introduction

As far back as I can remember I have been fascinated by men and women of courage. Stories of people who took brave decisions in the service of great causes enthralled me, especially when more comfortable and far less dangerous alternatives were open to them.

But what separates these people of courage from the rest of us and makes their lives and achievements so remarkable is that they were prepared to endure great sacrifices and persist, some of them for many years, against the odds and in the face of the greatest adversity. They are for us exemplars and icons, at once daunting and cherished. Their stories live on and inspire us.

They chose to act when others stood by, and made sacrifices that were worthwhile and noble. Social disapproval, danger, physical pain, and even the risk of death mattered far less to them than personal belief and moral purpose. Quite simply, they seemed to be driven and sustained by higher ideals.

The kind of courage that fascinated me went beyond physical bravery, though almost always it did involve that admirable quality. It was not just risk-taking, and definitely not risk-taking in a doubtful cause. Here was altruistic courage: sacrifice and determination for a higher purpose; the courage that endures and prevails, and eventually dignifies all humanity. It was an expression of both strength of character and strength of belief.

In preparing to write this book I read widely about such heroism and learned much: sudden deeds of near-incredible valor by combat soldiers, some being recognized with a Victoria Cross; the cool, selfless courage demanded of bomb-disposal officers almost routinely, as part of their daily task; the selfless heroism of individuals, such as the passengers who took on the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93; and the high courage displayed and the constant dangers and awful sacrifices endured by those who fought more covertly in Europe and Asia as members of the Special Operations Executive.

Hugh Seagrim served with the SOE in Burma from early 1943, and was awarded the George Cross posthumously. His remarkable story was summarized in the "Action for which commended," which tells how an SOE party was ambushed, with only Seagrim and a Burmese colleague escaping, how the subsequent Japanese manhunt involved brutal reprisals against the Karen hill people, and how Seagrim agreed to surrender simply to end the torture and the killing of the people who had sheltered him. When, with eight companions, he was sentenced to death, he argued that he alone should die since the rest were only obeying his orders. He failed in this, but comforted and sustained his men as they faced death and was steadfast to the end, which came in September 1944 in Rangoon.

All these heroes—civilians, soldiers, and secret agents, called in sudden and unforeseeable circumstances to acts of bravery and even heroism—command our highest admiration and gratitude; already the wars and uncertainties of our still young century show these qualities are needed still, and are still there when they are needed.

Courage has fascinated me for many years now. I remember being given, when I was ten, an encyclopedia of twentieth-century history. In it were recorded great deeds: the daring of Shackleton, the sheer determination and inspired improvisation that took his expedition across the Antarctic; the bravery and ill-fated amateurism of the Mallory and Irvine attempt on Everest in 1924; Scott's expedition to the South Pole in 1912, and Captain Oates and his last sacrifice. All of them I admired, but the page that I turned to again and again was the one that surprised me most: the story—and picture— of Nurse Edith Cavell. It made a deep impression on me.

Cavell, the daughter of a Norfolk vicar, was working in Brussels at the start of the First World War. She could have left but chose to stay, a British national in a country first threatened, then overrun by German forces. Behind enemy lines, she set up secret routes home for escaping Allied prisoners but was eventually arrested, tried by court martial, and executed. She had continued amid growing danger to tend the wounded and help prisoners on their way to freedom. She could have chosen not to, or she could have got away herself, but she did neither. She faced her trial and execution with dignity, courage, and the words: "I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone."

Many years later, and having read and seen much more of it, I am still in awe of that kind of courage—and that is how I came to write this book.

Of the people whose lives I have written about, the only one I have met and been fortunate enough to get to know is Nelson Mandela. Over a series of meetings I began to learn something of the nature, wisdom, and courage of one of the greatest men of any century.

As I got to know him, the concept of courage—first glimpsed almost fifty years ago and elaborated on through my reading of history and a life in politics—came wonderfully alive in this wise and genial grandfather, now in his late eighties: a man who had faced death for his beliefs, survived an imprisonment that came to symbolize the injustice suffered by his people, and endured it to emerge to freedom and put an end to that injustice.

His long and often lonely struggle against apartheid, his defiance at his trial, his quiet dignity and growing authority even when still imprisoned, his ultimate vindication and his magnanimity—in office and retirement—amount to a towering record of courage in the best of causes: an achievement so great that it has allowed us to forget how catastrophically apartheid might have ended had it not been for his example, his work, and his presence. I do not attempt to conceal my affection, indeed my reverence, for Nelson Mandela. Meeting him and his wife, Graça Machel—an unbelievably courageous woman—inspired me to write this book, and readers will, I hope, understand why the chapter about him has proved to be the longest.

I first came to know of Aung San Suu Kyi—the only other contemporary I write about in this book—when I met her husband, Professor Michael Aris, at a Labour Party conference in the early 1990s. I was aware of her struggle for human rights in Burma. What I did not know was the full human story behind what she did. Michael Aris told me he had not seen his wife for years, that even phone calls were becoming increasingly difficult, and that she had not seen her children for many years either.

Growing up in Burma after the Second World War, Aung San Suu Kyi admired her father's leadership in the struggle against Japanese occupation and his political and military achievements. She was abroad when her country's democracy was threatened by military dictatorship, but chose to return. As the military grip on Burma tightened, she turned down many opportunities to leave and rejoin her family, thus gradually acquiring the status of a political leader and her country's best hope for a better future. A Nobel laureate now, and still under house arrest after years of uncertainty, privation, bereavement, and loss of family, she remains to this day the elected leader of her country—and the greatest and noblest symbol of the democratic aspirations of her people.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot dead by a racist assassin in 1968. A scholarly third- generation Baptist minister, he resisted family pressures to succeed his father in a prestigious Atlanta parish and instead took up a pastoral charge in Montgomery, Alabama. He had hoped to finish his doctoral thesis and write, but as the Rosa Parks–inspired Montgomery Bus Boycott sprang up, it was he—the charismatic young local pastor—who was called to a leadership role.

King was a reluctant leader, and courage was thrust upon him. He and his family faced death threats right from the start, but over the following thirteen years his leadership of the civil rights movement and his total commitment to non-violence succeeded in trans-forming the United States—freeing black Americans from the humiliation, injustice, and political exclusion of segregation. "The end we seek," he said, "is a society at peace with itself," and he knew that non-violence was the only possible means to that end.

It was his courageous choice of non-violent protest—which alienated him from blacks while not immediately endearing him to whites—that singled him out from other black leaders, but the courage and wisdom of that choice eventually prevailed. When, after centuries of entrenched injustice, legislation to establish civil rights for American blacks was passed in 1965, the single most important reason it succeeded was that it enjoyed the support of whites as well as blacks.

Despite pressure and threats from both white supremacists and Black Power activists, Martin Luther King, Jr., had patiently created— through organization, oratory, and strategic vision—a majority, white and black, that ultimately prevailed. Tragically, he died for his cause, but bequeathed to the United States a better, fairer society.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis just days before the end of the Second World War, took on a different kind of evil. As a young pastor and theologian in 1930s Germany, he abhorred anti-Semitism and opposed it when all too few of his colleagues wished or dared to. His Christianity was not theirs, and his moral universe was not corrupted by racism: his respect for all human beings was absolute. He left Germany and returned, and then left and returned again at the most dangerous time to do so, gradually realizing that to live out his Christian faith he must stay in his homeland and risk his life. As the ultimate evil and violence of fascism closed in on him, he showed courage that was truly saintly, as priest and inspiration to his fellow prisoners right to the end. His selfless courage and endurance kept a flame of moral principle alight and, in a sense, contributed to the birth of a new post-war Germany.

In the same dark years in Europe, Raoul Wallenberg, a businessman from Sweden, which was neutral in the war, worked under diplomatic cover in Hungary, abandoning a life of privilege and safety that he was under no pressure to give up. Instead Wallenberg used his energy, ingenuity, and charm to build an organization that provided impressive if dubious documentation that allowed over 100,000 of Hungary's Jews with notional "Swedish connections" to escape the Holocaust. As the war ended, he saved thousands more from Adolf Eichmann's death camps, before himself disappearing into a Soviet gulag, never to return.

I think of Robert F. Kennedy as the first modern political leader— prepared to break with old conventions and offer a wholly distinct message that transcended both the old right and the old left. Of course, we think of his courage in risking his life in the full knowledge of his brother's and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, assassinations, and in thinking boldly about the future. When he broke with President Johnson on Vietnam he did so on ethical grounds, and when he broke with established Democratic thinking on poverty and urban renewal, he put forward a wholly different view of the responsible and empowered citizen and also a wholly different view of responsive and enabling government.

Cicely Saunders, who died in 2005 at the age of eighty-seven, is probably the least known of those I write about. Yet in her life she did more than anyone to come to terms with the greatest mystery of all: death. I believe she should be better known, because her long, courageous struggle transformed the way the dying are cared for, not only in Britain but across the world. After a sad childhood, she trained successively as a nurse, social worker, and doctor because she saw how much dying patients suffered—physically and spiritually—as a result of being written off as "failed cases," and she saw also how much had to be done to ease that suffering. She fought entrenched professional ignorance and indifference to the needs of the dying, but by the end of her long life had triumphed. I have chosen her because, through the hospice movement and the new medical specialty of palliative care, Cicely Saunders's life of service succeeded in changing attitudes, generating important new knowledge. In changing our view of death she has changed our view of life itself.

I believe the lives I have briefly summarized above and treat in more detail in subsequent chapters tell us much about courage: what it is, how it manifests itself, and what a huge difference it can make in the most challenging and threatening of circumstances. The achievements of Edith Cavell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Cicely Saunders, and Aung San Suu Kyi are great and lasting, and very different. However, I believe that by attempting to understand more about the nature of that courage we can draw some lessons of real and enduring value, and I will return to that in the conclusion of this book.

But first their stories, which are about courage and much more.

Eight people emerge with their human fallibilities, their doubts and hesitations, the choices they faced and how they faced them, yet all of them endured. The more I got to know about them the more fascinated I became, and the more I wanted to know, but within the limits of this series of short biographical essays I hope I can pass on to others something of the fascination courage held for me when I first learned about it at the age of ten—and how it can continue to transform our world today.